Whoopi Goldberg Just Made the Best Case for Trump’s White House Ballroom

The Washington Hilton almost became a massacre site Saturday night.

Now the woman who can't bring herself to say his name just told him exactly what to build.

Whoopi Goldberg just handed Republicans their best argument – and she did it on live television without realizing it.

Whoopi Goldberg Said It on The View After the White House Correspondents Dinner Shooting

An assassin named Cole Tomas Allen checked into the Washington Hilton on April 24. He packed a shotgun, a handgun, and knives into a bag, rode the hotel elevator down to the event floor, and ran through a Secret Service checkpoint firing at agents while 2,600 people – including the President of the United States, the First Lady, the Vice President, and half the Cabinet – sat at dinner tables inside.

He called himself the "Friendly Federal Assassin." He'd been planning this for three weeks.

Secret Service agents stopped him. One took a round to the chest – his ballistic vest saved his life. Allen was tackled and arrested. Trump was rushed off the stage.

By Monday morning, Goldberg was on The View processing what happened. She calls Trump "you-know-who" because she refuses to speak his name on air. She's been doing it for years. And then, in the middle of discussing the Hilton's security failures, she said this: "You-know-who always talks about he is a builder, he knows how to do this. Maybe he needs to build a new hotel there that has a big enough ballroom, where they don't have to go to the Hilton, where the ballroom is the building. This is what he says he does well."

She kept going. "Forget destroying the White House. Maybe it's time someone built a hotel with a bigger ballroom."

Whoopi Goldberg, Trump's most theatrical critic on daytime television, just endorsed the core argument Republicans have been making about presidential security for months.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2048869041364680724

Cole Allen Walked Into the Washington Hilton Because Any Hotel Guest Could

Trump walked to the briefing room podium Saturday night – barely an hour after being rushed off the stage at gunpoint – and said the Hilton "was not a particularly secure building."

He wasn't wrong, and he wasn't just spinning. Allen didn't have to be clever. He booked three nights starting April 24. He used an interior stairwell to bypass monitored areas, walked to the terrace level – one floor above the ballroom – and ran the checkpoint. Any hotel guest has access to the same floors, the same stairwells, the same terrace. That's the structural problem with holding presidential events at civilian venues: the security perimeter is porous by design.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said publicly what everyone who watched the footage was already thinking: "I'm convinced that if there had been a presidential ballroom adjacent to the White House, that guy would have never gotten in."

He's right.

Lindsey Graham Has a $400 Million Bill and Democrats Have to Vote

Graham, Sen. Katie Britt, and Sen. Eric Schmitt introduced legislation Monday to authorize $400 million in federal funding to complete construction of the White House ballroom. Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana moved to fast-track a separate bill. Rand Paul announced he'd bring his own measure to the floor Tuesday. Rep. Lauren Boebert. Rep. Randy Fine. Even Sen. John Fetterman – the one Democrat willing to say what the footage showed – called on colleagues to support the project.

The ballroom isn't just a big room for fancy dinners. Graham's bill includes a Secret Service annex and military infrastructure beneath it. The entire point is to eliminate the vulnerability Allen walked straight into – a civilian hotel where a reservation is all it takes.

Trump has been pushing for this 90,000-square-foot facility since the start of his second term. He demolished the East Wing to begin construction. A federal judge blocked it in March, ruling Congress had to authorize it first. Democrats called it illegal. They called it a vanity project. They called it self-aggrandizing.

Then Saturday happened.

Graham said Monday that Trump brings up the ballroom every single time he talks to a senator. "I don't know, I'd play better if you built the ballroom." Every time. His instinct was right and Saturday proved it.

Now Democrats have a choice. They can keep blocking presidential security to score political points against a building they've decided to hate. Or they can look at the footage of 2,600 people diving under tables while an assassin with a shotgun ran a checkpoint – and vote yes.

Whoopi Goldberg, of all people, already made up her mind.

Sources:

• "Suspect in White House Correspondents' Dinner Shooting Charged with Attempt to Assassinate the President," U.S. Department of Justice, April 28, 2026.
• Hanna Panreck, "Whoopi Goldberg Demands Trump Build a New Hotel With Big Enough Ballroom Space After WHCA Dinner Shooting," Fox News, April 27, 2026.
• "Congressional Republicans Rally Around Trump's White House Ballroom Project," CNBC, April 27, 2026.
• "Senate Republicans Push Bill to Authorize $400 Million for White House Ballroom," The Hill, April 27, 2026.
• "GOP Senators Push to Fund Trump Ballroom After Correspondents' Dinner Shooting," OPB/Reuters, April 27, 2026.